GOP Plans Competing Events on Immigration

Setting the stage for a summer of political fireworks, a leader of the Senate effort to overhaul immigration law has said that he will answer a House plan to hold immigration hearings around the country by having his own set of hearings.

The announcement by Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) indicates that, instead of watching lawmakers negotiate a final version of immigration legislation, Americans will see dueling efforts by House and Senate members to promote radically different visions of immigration policy.

Specter said his first hearing would be in Philadelphia on July 5 -- the same date that House Republicans are to hold a hearing in San Diego, suggesting that a split-screen debate on immigration would occur from opposite sides of the nation.

Hearings by both chambers are to continue through August.

The competing events will display Republican divisions over immigration. The Republican-led House passed legislation last year that focused on improving security at the border and cracking down on employers who hired illegal workers.

The Senate bill, crafted by Republicans and Democrats and passed in May, includes a guest worker program and measures that would create a path to citizenship for many illegal immigrants in the U.S. Those provisions are strongly opposed by House conservatives.

Negotiations to reconcile the two versions of the immigration package were expected to begin, but the decision this week by House leaders to launch their new round of hearings means that those talks are unlikely to start for months, if at all.

On Thursday, House Republicans turned aside accusations that their hearings on the Senate bill were designed to delay or derail passage of a final bill.

“Our goal is to get a bill,” said House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio).

House members are to hold hearings on security issues and on provisions of the Senate bill that they oppose.

Specter said Wednesday that he would hold his hearings to “develop a broader, factual evidentiary record on the need for the comprehensive bill that is challenged by quite a few House members.”

“The House has said repeatedly that the Senate is out of touch with what America wants,” Specter said. “Let’s have hearings on the Senate provisions, and I think when it’s more fully understood, Americans will want that.”

Specter’s hearings will focus on the Senate’s proposed guest worker program, which would allow more foreign workers in the U.S., and on plans to create a path toward citizenship for many of the nation’s estimated 12 million illegal immigrants.

“They are marked as felons under the House bill,” Specter said. “What are you going to do with them? You going to round them up? You going to push them into hiding? My thinking is they can’t be ignored.”

His July 5 hearing would include farmers, landscapers and hotel industry representatives. An aide to Specter said the shared date of his Philadelphia hearing and House leaders’ San Diego event was unintentional.

No other dates or topics for Senate hearings have been released.

As many as seven committees will take part in the House hearings, which begin in Washington next week with a look at intelligence gathering along the border.

The hearing in San Diego and a third, on July 7 in Laredo, Texas, will discuss border vulnerabilities and international terrorism. Hearings set for mid-July will look at designating English as the official U.S. language and will review enforcement of current immigration laws and their impact on the workforce.

A hearing planned for the week of Aug. 14, probably in Yuma, Ariz., will focus on the costs of illegal immigration to federal, state and local governments.

These issues have been examined in previous House and Senate committee hearings.

As-yet unscheduled House hearings will focus on specific measures in the Senate bill. These include provisions that would increase legal immigration, allocate Social Security benefits to immigrants for work done while they were illegal, grant in-state tuition to illegal immigrants and require U.S. consultation with Mexico before any barrier is built along the border.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, called the GOP plan a “political stunt” staged for the November elections, when Republicans could lose control of Congress.

Waxman said the hearings were out of character for the Republican leadership, which he said had failed to invite input on dozens of other pressing issues.

“The idea of holding hearings to get input? They are not serious about that at all. This is part of their campaign to hold onto the House,” he said.

Immigrant rights activists said they would welcome field hearings that invited a balanced debate.

“But I don’t think anybody believes we’re likely to see an honest effort to really have an open discussion of this issue,” said Benjamin Johnson, director of the Immigration Policy Center in Washington.

Others said House members might find that most Americans backed the Senate approach, which had been endorsed by President Bush.

“I suspect they’ll find that the American public, the Senate and the president are on the same page on this,” said Angela Kelley, deputy director of the National Immigration Forum in Washington. “They want comprehensive reforms that will fix a broken immigration system.”